A polyvagal perspective clarifies the neurobiological and biobehavioral shifts that occurred during evolutionary transition from asocial reptiles to social mammals. This transition enabled mammals, unlike their reptilian an-cestors, to derive a biological benefit from social interactions.

This innovation enabled social behavior to function as a neuromodulator that could efficiently regulate and optimize autonomic function to support ho-meostatic processes. This journey is highlighted by the phylogenetic transition during which the autonomic nervous system was repurposed to suppress defensive strategies to support and express sociality. The product of this transition was an autonomic nervous system with capacities to self-calm, to spontaneous socially engage others, and to mitigate threat reactions in ourselves and others through social cues. Thus, social behavior became embedded with specific neurobiological processes that had capabilities to support homeostatic functions leading to optimized health, growth, and restoration. Polyvagal Theory emphasizes sociality as the core process in mitigating threat reactions and supporting mental and physical health.

The transdisciplinary origins of Polyvagal Theory: A polyvagal perspective clarifies the evolutionary transition that enabled mammals to be social and to use sociality as a mechanism to regulate and optimize physiological state and homeostatic processes. This journey is highlighted by the phylogenetic transition from reptiles to mammals, during which the autonomic nervous system was repur-posed to suppress defensive strategies in order to support and express sociality. The product of this transition was an autonomic nervous sys-tem with capacities to self-calm, to spontaneous socially engage others, and to mitigate threat reactions in ourselves and others through social cues. Thus, social behavior became embedded with specific neurobio-logical processes that had capabilities to support homeostatic functions that would lead to optimized health, growth, and restoration. Succinc-tly, Polyvagal Theory emphasizes sociality as a core process in miti-gating threat and supporting mental and physical health.
To understand the origins of Polyvagal Theory, visualize a Rubik’s cube with surfaces representing different disciplines moving in time as each field is selectively updated by new information. Metaphorically, Polyvagal Theory is the solution of a Rubik’s puzzle, a solution to how evolution repurposed the mammalian autonomic nervous system to contain defensive reactions and enable sociality to thrive. This metaphor is helpful, since Polyvagal Theory is a product of an extraction of rinciples derived from the integration of several disciplines each with its own history, research paradigms, literature, methodology, and theoretical context. The theory evolved to ask new questions and was not conceptualized to replace the predominant theories associated with these foundational disciplines. Thus, the solution to the puzzle produced a transdisciplinary theory that had a foundational basis but was not limited or biased by any specific discipline.